When Bird Kids Attack
by ShadowBobcat10
Summary: What happened after Jeb released Max's flock from the School, but before "The Angel Experiment"? Find out in the Maximum Ride alternate universe prequel.
1. Escape

**Hello, this is ShadowBobcat10, and welcome to my latest Maximum Ride fanfic. This time, it's an AU prequel of the series. Some weird things are going to happen, there will be some French, but I'll try to keep everything under K+. If it goes over, please let me know in a review.**

 **Now, let's get started. We'll be escaping the dreaded school!**

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Chapter One

 _ESCAPE_

I wake up, and it's dark. Still, I can see the bars of my dog crate, since I have amazing night vision.

Hi, my name is Maximum, and I'm a human that lives in this place called the School. Well, I'm not exactly human, just mostly human. I'm a recombinant life form, part bird, so I have wings and hollow bones and all sorts of cool things. At least they would be cool if I didn't have to get tortured here.

There are others like me, Fang, Iggy, Nudge, the Gasman, and Angel. We all stay in dog crates until one of the whitecoats take us and perform tests. The only thing I hate more than staying here in this dog crate is the tests.

The door of my room opened and light shined through. A whitecoat stepped in and put another recombinant in a dog crate, and walked out. It's Fang, my friend, and he was shaking from what they did to him.

"Not cool," Angel, the youngest one here, whispered. "They shouldn't do that to us." She was probably talking about what happened to Fang. Angel could read minds.

"I didn't know you were awake," I said, extending my hand into Angel's crate.

"Hi Max," she replied. Angel's blond hair looked ravaged ever since the whitecoats began testing how little food they could feed her. I don't think she had eaten for a week by then.

"Hungry Max. Can you convince them to give me some food?" Angel croaked. I stroked her hair.

"I'll try the best I can, sweety," I soothed. The whitecoats watched us eat, so it wasn't all that easy to sneak food.

"Can you hide it?" Angel asked, giving me the answer to my dilemma.

"Okay," I said as the door opened again, the whitecoat Jeb stepping in.

"Quiet, little ones," he said, unlocking all our crates. I wondered what he was going to do to us as a group. "Come on, follow me."

We crawled out of our cages and walked out the door. Angel held on to my hand.

"He's leading us outside," she whispered. Angel looked hopeful, something I had never seen before.

"Where?" I asked. I'd never been outside before. I didn't know what dangers lurked outside.

Angel spoke one word. "Home."


	2. Flying

**Welcome to chapter two of _When Bird Kids Attack_! This is Shadow reporting for duty. This time, we're taking flight, and tossing in a few Erasers in the mean time. It'll be fun. I hope you enjoy the ride!**

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Chapter Two

 _FLYING_

You probably wouldn't understand. Well, I don't understand you, so we're even. But _home_ was a concept I'd never had before, and it was _awesome_ in the full meaning of that word.

Our house was the shape of an E, and everyone had _their own room!_ Living in a dog crate is hard on the body, but you can't imagine how good a bed feels after living in a crate all your life.

Now we were standing on the side of a mountain, pretty far from the house. Jeb said he was going to teach us how to fly. Angel and Gazzy had to sit out, since they were too young and their wings hadn't developed enough yet.

"Wow, we're going to fly!" Nudge squealed. "I've always dreamed of flying. But not like the whitecoats or the other mutants dream, since I have wings and all. Do you think flying is easy, or really hard? I hope it's not hard." She's always talked a lot, but I've never seen her so excited about anything. Well, in that case, I've never been so excited about anything either.

"Yeah, no kidding," Iggy responded. Iggy was blind, lucky him, so he didn't see the drop at the end of the cliff.

"I wish I could learn," Angel said, standing away from the drop.

I looked sympathetically to Angel, her curls glowing in the sun. "You'll grow up soon enough,"

We just kind of milled around, waiting for Jeb to give us the signal. I still haven't figured out why a whitecoat would want to help us, but I'm glad Jeb isn't like the others.

"You ready?" Jeb asked. He looked almost as excited as us.

"He is," Angel whispered to me. I smiled. Though it was kind of strange, even for me, to have Angel in our heads, it's helped us survive so far, so I've learned to like her reassurance.

Jeb walked over to me. "Max, you're the oldest. Do you want to go first?"

I bit down hard on my fear. Humans weren't supposed to fly, but I was. "Yes."

I walked to the edge of the cliff. "Remember to flap," Jeb reminded me.

I opened my wings and jumped, trying the catch the air. I moved my wings up and down like Jeb had showed me, and I tried to remember the videos of the eagles and raptors flying, gracefully and perfectly.

The ground was still moving too fast. I panicked. What if Jeb was wrong, and I couldn't fly on first try? I'd be pancakes! I flapped furiously, then I heard a shout.

"GLIDE, MAX. GLIDE!" Angel shouted at the top of her lungs.

Thank God for the youngest member of my flock, Angel. I extended my wings as far as they could go and caught the air. I flapped in tiny movements to stay up in the air, but I largely glided.

I finally landed at the bottom of the cliff and looked back up at Jeb, giving him a thumbs up.

Fang and Iggy flew down as well, so only Nudge was left.

"Oh no," I heard Angel say, then we say the Erasers running towards us on the bottom of the cliff face.

"Oh darn," wasn't exactly what I said, but let's just pretend I said that.

"Let's get up there," Fang said, pointing to the top of the cliff where Jeb and the younger ones were waiting.

I had this need to revenge against what the School had done to us, and what they were doing now. More Erasers was the wrong move.

"Remember the moves Jeb taught us?" I asked Fang and Iggy.

"Yeah," Fang admitted.

"I'm blind, you know," Iggy responded.

"Really?" I sarcastically bit back. "We have to move. Like now."

I charged the Erasers, hitting them head on. I punched one in the gut, then roundhouse kicked it in the face. Surprisingly, he fell. I felt empowered, like I could finally fight back to the stuff of my nightmares.

Over in the corner of my eye, I could see that despite Iggy's blindness, he was doing fine on his own. Fang was darting around like the silent shadow he always was.

In no time, I decimated two other Erasers. It wasn't all that hard, but if I wanted to be faster, I would have to practice.

"Did we actually do that?" Fang whispered over the last Eraser.

"Yeah?" I said. I wasn't all that sure, either. It was good that I could do it, but I wasn't sure if I wanted to do that again.

"Hey, wait for me," Nudge said, flying down to meet us.

"Man, that was awesome!" Iggy yelled. "Did you see that?" he yelled to Gazzy up on the cliff.

Gazzy seemed very enthusiastic about the whole being FREAKING ATTACKED BY ERASERS thing. Which I think is totally crazy, if you haven't noticed yet.

Jeb met us at the bottom of the cliff. "Are you guys okay?" he asked worriedly.

I checked over myself, and I found nothing was broken, though my arm was a bit sore.

We drove home, but Jeb didn't say anything else. I had a felling he was worried about more attacks, and that he didn't like us charging and attacking the Erasers.

"That wasn't that bad, was it?" I asked Jeb.

He looked at me. "Please don't do something like that again until you've got more training. I don't want you getting hurt." Jeb looked a bit uncomfortable. "Or captured."

I hadn't realized the Erasers were there to take us, not kill us. In that case, we would have to be a lot more careful.

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	3. Ari

**It's Shadow here, with a brand new chapter. Well, sort of brand new. I've got this all on the Maximum Ride Fanfiction Wikia, where I do all my writing, and I update there much more often. This one's in Ari's perspective. Hope you enjoy!**

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Chapter Three

 _ARI_

 _Back in the school..._

Ari wandered the halls of his father's lab, wondering. A few months ago, his father would come to the lab every day. Even longer ago, Ari didn't live in the lab. But after his mother died, things changed.

"Hey Ari," a coworker of his dad greeted. "There's something special for you today."

Ari followed the white-coated man to a hospital-looking room. Somehow, Ari was nervous. He never liked check ups.

"What this, Tre-tre?" Ari asked.

Ari's father's coworker smiled. "Its for the best, Ari."

When he left Ari in the room alone, the room filled with a sweet, cloying smell. Though Ari wouldn't have known, it was the smell of Chloroform.

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 _Back to the flock..._

"Are we going to a shopping mall?" Nudge squealed. For whatever reason, Nudge was obsessed with pictures of shopping malls. I thought they were absolutely boring.

"Only if we have to," Jeb replied. Apparently, he agreed with me.

Out the window, I saw trees turning pretty colors, orange, red, brown. I'd never seen trees those colors before. Actually, before Jeb saved us, none of us had seen the outside world before.

"Look at those colors," little Gazzy whispered. "Iggy, I wish you could still see this."

"I know, bro," Iggy replied softly. "I wish that, too."

"Doyouthinkthetreesarealwayslikethat?" Nudge said without breathing. "They look so COOL!"

Suddenly, I saw a bit of movement following our car. Eraser movement.

"Jeb," I said, shaking his shoulder. "Incoming."

"We have company," Fang said.

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 _The School..._

"What?" Ari complained. His whole body hurt much more than it ever had, and he felt big, much larger than a little kid like him should have been.

"It worked!" the same white coated man, Trevor, exclaimed. "I can't believe it actually worked."

"Ne pas obtenir en avant de vous-même, Trevor," another lady chided Trevor. "Il pourrait mourir juste du choc."

Trevor shrugged. "I still can't understand a word you say, Jeanne."

"Don't be silly," Jeanne continued in English with a thick French accent. "Ne jamais rien laisser au hasard. Vous ne savez jamais ."

"Ari," Trevor addressed him directly, taking Ari's hand. "You might not understand this completely, but your dad's not coming back. In order to stay, you have to be of use to us."

"Ne pas effrayer le garçon," Jeanne said. "Il est trop jeune pour comprendre cela. Besides, il wouldn't même de comprendre. You see?"

"Fine. Follow me Ari," Trevor instructed.

Ari followed Trevor down the white hallway, Jeanne following close behind arguing with Trevor with words Ari didn't understand.

Finally, he was led to a room lined with dog crates. "Arrêter cela. Nous sommes ici de toute façon," Jeanne said.

Trevor opened one of the crates. "This is your new home," he said.

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 **The French is from Google Translate, so correct me if my grammar is wrong. Google is notorious for problems with their translations.**

 **Also, please don't forget to review, follow, fav, ect!**


	4. Road Trip

**A bit of action this chapter. Let me know if you still consider this K+.**

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I kind of left you guys hanging last time. I'll try not to do that again, but I'd never seen Fang's face like that.

Anyway, Fang had this look on his face like a mix of astonishment and anger.

"Why do we keep getting attacked?" Angel asked. She looked scared, almost as bad as when we were still in the School.

"You'll be fine, little Ange," I assured. "We'll take care of you."

Jeb turned around and looked at us. "We can either fight, or we can run."

If you know us, it's obvious what we would choose. "Fight."

Reluctantly, Jeb let us out of the car. I heard Fang crack his nuckles.

"Are you ready," Iggy asked. "'Cause I'm ready to kick some Eraser butt."

"Let's go," I said.

I ran straight towards the closest Eraser and tackled him down. He bit hard on my arm, but I was to mad at him ruining my trip to care. In seconds, at least it felt like seconds, he was down.

I totally destroyed the next two Erasers with the same fury that I did the first. When they were all gone, we just sat on the side of the road contemplating. Why would they send Erasers after us anyway? I couldn't understand, but Jeb seemed to have a lot to say about this.

"We have to be more careful," he said after hushing us all back into the car. "We can't have the School taking you back. I have to keep you safe, and that means listening to my instructions."

We all nodded solemnly because what just happened did shake us up a bit. If not more than a bit.

We all vowed to stay on our feet about potential attacks. And oh boy I was glad I did.

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